4 ms·

Significantly worse than the flu - multi systemic organ damage. The narrative that covid is like the flu, is both wildly inaccurate as this paper explains, and

Significantly worse than the flu - multi systemic organ damage. The narrative that covid is like the flu, is both wildly inaccurate as this paper explains, and also dangerous, leading to a more cavalier attitude towards covid prevention.

godelski 4y ago
Maybe I'm being generous to the parent, but I also would like a comparison to the flu. Not because I don't believe covid is significantly worse (when I got it, it was way worse than the flu), but because I don't have a medical background and it is difficult to contextualize the actual risks here without some baseline where I have a decent intuition already built around. But where I disagree with the parent is the need for this paper to specify those distinctions as I'm not the target audience. I can read data and understand it, but any good data scientist knows that you need real expertise in a domain to contextualize that data. It would be naive to think that my understanding of data directly translates to a strong understanding of this work. I'm not the domain expert.
- moistly 4y ago
  But have you actually had the flu? I ask, because most people say “oh, I had the flu” when in actuality they just had a common cold. The flu, the real flu, knocks you on the ass so hard that you actively start considering that death is a possibility and that heading over to the hospital would be a good idea. I’ve had the flu perhaps twice. Once as a child, once in my early 50s. The latter completely recalibrated my understanding of illness.
  - shawabawa3 4y ago
    Note that like COVID the flu has varying severity You can catch the flu and have not much more than a cold or even be asymptomatic, then your grandma catches it off you and died from it
  - dham 4y ago
    Yea, that's been my experience. Incredibly frustrating. Pre Covid, people at work would put on Slack they "had the flu they can't work today". Or "I had the flu this weekend". What they don't know is if you have the flu you literally can't move from bed and the thought of typing into Slack would be a task too great.
  - pimeys 4y ago
    It is bad. I had a few of them during my life. When I was eleven the flu triggered a reaction in my body, destroying the insulin producing cells from my pancreas. I've had a type 1 diabetes since then. Nowadays in Finland (where I am from), they recommend flu vaccinations for kids who have type 1 diabetes in the family to reduce the risk of catching it. Not all flus are bad to all of us, but if you catch the right strain, it can really knock you out.
  - anon84873628 4y ago
    Yeah, my experience with swine flu was at least as bad as COVID...
  - nradov 4y ago
    Many influenza infections are asymptomatic (just like COVID-19).
- anon84873628 4y ago
  It would be nice if someone explained the specific biological reason for why they are different. Like, because they target different types of cells, or reproduce in different ways. The lay explanation of a virus is that it invades your cells and hijacks their machinery to make more of itself. That makes them all sound the same. For bacteria we at least can understand that they have different types of metabolism, come in different shapes, produce different defensive compounds, etc.
lotsofpulp 4y ago
I have had Covid at least 2 times and influenza once in the last 2 or 3 years. The influenza is the one that knocked me on my ass and sent me to the doctor thinking I might have something more wrong with me. Covid was meh, not worse than any other sickness the toddlers bring home.
- misnome 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - bigDinosaur 4y ago
    I'm willing to bet most people would pick a Covid reinfection over Influenza. That's not even minimising covid (although with such robust population immunity, now is the time to stop making such a unique deal about covid and to stop freaking out about every single variant) - it's simply that the flu is not a mild disease. Influenza is a horrible virus.
kazinator 4y ago
There was a flu pandemic 100 years ago which killed 21 million.
- layer8 4y ago
  The comparison is to current strains of influenza. There could also be a much worse coronavirus 100 years from now.
- nradov 4y ago
  There was probably another coronavirus pandemic 134 years ago that killed a lot of people worldwide. https://doi.org/10.1111/1751-7915.13889 https://doi.org/10.1111/1751-7915.13889

godelski 4y ago

Maybe I'm being generous to the parent, but I also would like a comparison to the flu. Not because I don't believe covid is significantly worse (when I got it, it was way worse than the flu), but because I don't have a medical background and it is difficult to contextualize the actual risks here without some baseline where I have a decent intuition already built around. But where I disagree with the parent is the need for this paper to specify those distinctions as I'm not the target audience. I can read data and understand it, but any good data scientist knows that you need real expertise in a domain to contextualize that data. It would be naive to think that my understanding of data directly translates to a strong understanding of this work. I'm not the domain expert.

moistly 4y ago
But have you actually had the flu? I ask, because most people say “oh, I had the flu” when in actuality they just had a common cold. The flu, the real flu, knocks you on the ass so hard that you actively start considering that death is a possibility and that heading over to the hospital would be a good idea. I’ve had the flu perhaps twice. Once as a child, once in my early 50s. The latter completely recalibrated my understanding of illness.
- shawabawa3 4y ago
  Note that like COVID the flu has varying severity You can catch the flu and have not much more than a cold or even be asymptomatic, then your grandma catches it off you and died from it
- dham 4y ago
  Yea, that's been my experience. Incredibly frustrating. Pre Covid, people at work would put on Slack they "had the flu they can't work today". Or "I had the flu this weekend". What they don't know is if you have the flu you literally can't move from bed and the thought of typing into Slack would be a task too great.
- pimeys 4y ago
  It is bad. I had a few of them during my life. When I was eleven the flu triggered a reaction in my body, destroying the insulin producing cells from my pancreas. I've had a type 1 diabetes since then. Nowadays in Finland (where I am from), they recommend flu vaccinations for kids who have type 1 diabetes in the family to reduce the risk of catching it. Not all flus are bad to all of us, but if you catch the right strain, it can really knock you out.
- anon84873628 4y ago
  Yeah, my experience with swine flu was at least as bad as COVID...
- nradov 4y ago
  Many influenza infections are asymptomatic (just like COVID-19).
anon84873628 4y ago
It would be nice if someone explained the specific biological reason for why they are different. Like, because they target different types of cells, or reproduce in different ways. The lay explanation of a virus is that it invades your cells and hijacks their machinery to make more of itself. That makes them all sound the same. For bacteria we at least can understand that they have different types of metabolism, come in different shapes, produce different defensive compounds, etc.

lotsofpulp 4y ago

I have had Covid at least 2 times and influenza once in the last 2 or 3 years. The influenza is the one that knocked me on my ass and sent me to the doctor thinking I might have something more wrong with me. Covid was meh, not worse than any other sickness the toddlers bring home.

misnome 4y ago
[flagged]
- bigDinosaur 4y ago
  I'm willing to bet most people would pick a Covid reinfection over Influenza. That's not even minimising covid (although with such robust population immunity, now is the time to stop making such a unique deal about covid and to stop freaking out about every single variant) - it's simply that the flu is not a mild disease. Influenza is a horrible virus.

kazinator 4y ago

There was a flu pandemic 100 years ago which killed 21 million.

layer8 4y ago
The comparison is to current strains of influenza. There could also be a much worse coronavirus 100 years from now.
nradov 4y ago
There was probably another coronavirus pandemic 134 years ago that killed a lot of people worldwide. https://doi.org/10.1111/1751-7915.13889 https://doi.org/10.1111/1751-7915.13889